Application

The Habit

Chapter 39: Application

Kendra showed the duplex on a damp Thursday evening in May.

The building sat on Morrow two streets over from Leon, brick and square and unpretentious. One side already held a tenant with wind chimes and a disciplined herb box. The empty side had two bedrooms, a small kitchen, decent windows, and a backyard big enough for a child to believe in without an adult having to mow it like a sports field.

Renee stood in the front room with the application in one hand and Lila leaning against her leg.

"It's not Memphis," she said.

"Correct," Noel said.

"Thank you for the geographic expertise."

Kendra, a short woman in work scrubs and a denim jacket, moved through the rooms narrating facts in the language of someone who preferred tenants to understand both the assets and the absurdities.

"Water heater's new. Bathroom fan sounds like a crop duster but functions. That back door swells in August and needs your shoulder. If you call me about a clogged disposal, try not to put chicken bones in it first and then behave injured."

Lila looked up at Noel.

"This lady tells the truth."

"That's why Leon recommended her," Noel said.

The second bedroom got the real test.

Lila walked to the window, opened the closet, stood in the middle of the room with her arms out as if verifying radius, and said, "This one feels like marker storage."

Renee pressed her lips together.

"You are not helping me be cautious."

"Caution is overrated," Lila said.

Kendra looked at Renee.

"I need the application by Monday if you want me to hold it while I check references. That's as generous as I'm likely to get before my common sense returns."

After Kendra left, Noel stayed near the door while Renee walked the duplex once more on her own. Kitchen. Hall. Lila's maybe-room. Back door. Front room again. The motion of a woman trying not to mistake relief for wisdom.

"You don't have to tell me yes because it would make things easier for you," Noel said.

Renee stopped.

"And you don't have to keep warning me away from your own desire like it makes you honorable by itself."

He let that land.

Lila, sensing the adult air change, retreated to the window and began narrating the movements of a squirrel to herself at a volume that was technically private.

"I want you here," Noel said.

"I know."

"I also know that wanting a thing can make you careless about other people's cost."

Renee looked around the room once more.

"The cost exists whether I move or not," she said. "Memphis costs. Leaving costs. Staying costs. Lila changing schools costs. Me white-knuckling another year in a place that can be sold out from under us costs. There isn't a version where we don't spend something."

"So what are you buying."

The question hung there.

Renee looked through the front window toward the quiet street, the modest yards, the brick houses that had accepted their age without mistaking it for failure.

"A chance at ordinary," she said.

Noel felt the sentence settle in the room like weight testing a floor and finding it sound enough to stand.

They filled out the application at his kitchen table that night because Lila had fallen asleep in the truck on the way back and because paperwork behaves better, in Noel's opinion, when undertaken under a known roof. Renee wrote employment history. Noel provided Kendra's reference sheet from memory because Leon had delivered it folded into his shirt pocket like contraband. Lila slept on the back bedroom bed with one sock on and one sock missing to history.

When Renee finished, she set the pen down and looked at the form.

"I hate how much of a life can be reduced to lines and boxes."

"Most systems assume the quiet parts aren't load-bearing."

She smiled tiredly.

"That's disgustingly on brand for you."

On Saturday she texted a picture of the submitted form in Kendra's hand with the caption:

If this works, Edna is not allowed to feed us daily.

Noel replied:

You can tell her that. I will not.

That night he wrote:

At the duplex on Morrow tonight, a chance at ordinary turned out to have brick walls, a loud bathroom fan, and a little room Lila immediately claimed for marker storage. Renee filled out the application at my kitchen table after she stopped pretending all the cost belonged to moving and none of it belonged to staying in Memphis. I am trying to let possibility remain possibility long enough to deserve it.